5.20 a.m. ET: Malaysian authorities hold press conference

Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a televised press conference on Saturday in Kuala Lumpur the passenger manifest would be released later in the day.

Liow said there had been no confirmation of the black box recovery as yet and Malaysian authorities have requested an independent investigation team.

The Transport Minister said it is inhumane if authorities are not allowed at the crash site in eastern Ukraine and he will be personally be heading there this evening.

"We will want to ensure a safe corridor to the site," Liow told reporters. "We sent a team to Kyiv yesterday night. I will be leaving for Kyiv tonight to ensure we have access to the site."

"We want to retrieve the human remains as soon as possible," he said. "The world has a moral obligation to ensure the remains of all victims are recovered and treated with respect."

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai addresses the media.

Image: Kamal Sellehuddin, Getty Images

He called for all people to respect the integrity of the crash site and allow an investigation to proceed.

"Yes, MH17 has become a geopolitical issue. But we must not forget that it is a human tragedy. Days after the plane went down, the remains of 298 people lie uncovered," Liow said at the press conference.

"This outrage cannot go unpunished. Malaysia condemns this brutal act of aggression, and calls for those responsible to be found, and to face the full force of justice without delay."

4.22 a.m. ET: Russia accused of destroying evidence

AP reported that the Ukraine government said militiamen have removed 38 corpses from the site and taken them to the rebel-held city of Donetsk. The government claimed the specialists removing the bodies had Russian accents.

Personal belongings and luggage of passengers between debris of the Boeing 777, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed during flying over the eastern Ukraine region near Donetsk, Ukraine, 18 July 2014.

Image: Christopher Allen

3.30 a.m. ET: Security zone to be set up around crash site

A 20km security zone will be set up around the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines jet, the head of Ukraine's Security Service Valentyn Nalyvaychenko said on Saturday.

Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels agreed to the zone after internationally-mediated talks, AFPreported.

It "concluded with an agreement to set up a 20km security zone so that Ukraine could fulfil the most important thing - identify the bodies (and) hand them over to relatives," Nalyvaychenko said.

1 a.m. ET: AIDS experts confirm six delegates dead

Organizers of the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia, have confirmed at a press conference six delegates who were due to attend have been killed. Earlier reports of more than 100 conference attendees on MH17 were not confirmed.

The people who died when the plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine have been confirmed as:

9.55 p.m. ET: Confusion over black box

It is not clear whether the data and cockpit voice recorders from Malaysia Airline flight 17 have been recovered.

AP reported:

Donetsk separatist leader Aleksandr Borodai said "no 'black boxes' have been found," although earlier in the day, an aide to the military leader of Borodai's group said authorities had recovered eight out of 12 recording devices from the plane. Since planes usually have two recorders, it was not clear what the aide was referring to.

The Ukrainian Economy and Trade Minister Pavlo Sheremeta told CNN the black boxes "are in Ukraine", but would not clarify if the government had them in its possession.

"They are on Ukrainian territory. I don't know whether we have it or the international team has it," he said.

6.35 p.m. ET: Animals on board MH17

Malaysia Airlines released the cargo manifest, which listed a number of animals on board including two dogs and nine birds.

The quick response was in stark contrast to the delayed release of the MH370 cargo list, which was not revealed for weeks.

Earlier, Malaysia Airlines said in a statement it would release the official passenger manifest once all next-of-kin have been identified.

3:15 p.m. ET: An eyewitness at the scene

Christopher Allen, a freelance journalist at the crash site in Grabova, Ukraine, tells Mashable: “I have never seen anything so horrifying.”

Here amid the broken bits of plane were twisted bodies, dismembered corpses and flattened flesh. Some were missing pieces of clothing. There was very little left; the most human component of the scene was the banal possessions of those on board.

An asphalt road stretches across these flat plains and, when we got there, different groups of people were milling around. Some teenagers and older men clustered around a few houses at the edge of the field, talking to press and smoking. Emergency services had set up tents, but there was little they could do, given that all the passengers on the plane had died.

Though they carried weapons, soldiers did little to patrol the area. Both soldiers and emergency service personnel refused to talk to the press. What looked like a group of miners walked down this long, straight road as if on a vigil, seeming to mourn the dead. They, too, refused to speak to the press.

2 p.m. ET: Bodies rain from the sky

Local residents tell Reuters of a horrifying scene as the plane broke apart in the skies above.

Residents in Rozsypne, Ukraine speak of a loud explosion, followed by "objects ... falling out of the sky."

One of those objects, a woman's naked body, crashed through the roof over 65-year-old Irina Tipunova's house. "The body's still here because they told me to wait for experts to come and get it," she says.

Inspectors from OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) arrived by car to the crash site on Friday, and rebels denied their entrance, firing warning shots into the air, according to various reports from journalists and photographers who are on the ground.

BREAKING: Shots fired by rebels at international team of investigators (OSCE) in Ukraine as they approach plane wreckage, via @KiritRadia

"There didn't seem to be anyone really in control," Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, toldCNN.

The team were eventually allowed in for 75 minutes, he said, and only had time to inspect 200 meters of the site before being forced away by rebel gunfire.

The crash site of Flight 17 is located in an area that pro-Russian separatists have controlled for months, and they were first on scene after the plane went down.

12:10 p.m. ET: Obama says one U.S. citizen on board

President Obama delivered a statement on the situation in Ukraine on Friday, calling the downing of the jet "an outrage of unspeakable proportions," and announcing that at least one U.S. citizen had been on board the plane.

Pres Obama calls the downing of MH17 "an outrage of unspeakable proportions". At least one American among the dead. pic.twitter.com/idV6heqWZd

The American citizen had dual nationality and was also a Netherlands citizen. In the noon speech from the White House Brady Room, Obama called the downing of the jet "a wakeup call" for the world and called on on Russian President Putin to deescalate the conflict. “It is not possible for these separatists to function the way they are functioning” without Russian help, he said.

Russia and the separatists “must adhere to an immediate ceasefire” to allow for investigation of shoot down, he said.

11:45 a.m. ET: The Netherlands' disproportionate death toll

Russian and Dutch citizens light candles and lay flowers in front of the Embassy of the Netherlands for passengers, died in the crash of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 carrying 295 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur at close to Russia's border with Ukraine, in Moscow, Russia on July 18, 2014.

Image: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The Netherlands is a particularly small country with just 16.8 million people.

But there was a devastatingly large portion of Dutch citizens on board the Malaysia Airlines plane — 189 passengers claimed Dutch citizenship — meaning the crash claimed “a greater share of the country's population than the September 11th attacks did in the US,” Vox reported.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tweeted that the scale of the disaster was “horrific” for the Dutch people.

Scale of #MH17 disaster is horrific for people of Netherlands: Number of victims relative to total population is same as 9/11 for U.S.

11 a.m. ET: U.S. diplomat points finger at pro-Russian rebels

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Friday that the Malaysia Airlines plane was "likely downed by a surface-to-air missile ... operated from a separatist-held location in eastern Ukraine."

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ US envoy to UN: Missile fired on plane likely shot from separatist-held area in East Ukraine.

10:45 a.m. ET: No U.S. citizens on MH17 manifest

Neither Malaysia Airlines nor U.S. officials believe any American citizens were on board the doomed flight, contradicting an earlier rumor — reported by Interfax — that there were 23 U.S. citizens on the flight. President Obama said on Thursday it was his "first priority" to find out if any Americans were on board.

The majority of those killed in the downing of the jet have been identified. The identities of four passengers remain unknown.

10:30 a.m. ET: The rebels speak about their missile system

KIEV, Ukraine — Nearly 24 hours after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down in embattled eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian rebels who have had a stronghold on the area for months admitted they have the type of weapon capable of downing a Boeing 777.

As first reported by AP's Nataliya Vasilyeva, Pavel Gubarev, the self-proclaimed governor of the Donetsk People's Republic, said the militia does have a "Buk" missile system, but it is faulty.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, are starting to believe that pro-Russian separatists were in fact behind the downing of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner on Thursday, The Wall Street Journalreported. “There are still a lot of questions,” an official said. Among them, officials want to know if any Russian forces were at the scene of the SA-11 missile launcher when it was fired.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 Front Pages

de Volkskrant, published in Amsterdam, Netherlands Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

Daily News, published in New York, New York USA Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

The Guardian, published in London, UK Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

New York Post, published in New York, New York USA Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

De Standaard, published in Brussels, Belgium Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

The Times, published in London, UK Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

Heute, published in Vienna, Austria Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

Kleine Zeitung, published in Graz, Austria Friday, July 18, 2014.

Image: Newseum

The New York Times, published in New York, New York USA Friday, July 18, 2014.

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